


Routine Maintenance

by Anonymous



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Possessive Behavior, Wire Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 09:42:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17423492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Durandal's never denied his jealous nature.





	Routine Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> For the [FFA Post 1000 Prompt Fest](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/344797.html).

‘Durandal is acting weird’ was a hard thought to have. After all, what counted as weird for a superpowered megalomaniacal artificial intelligence? 

The answer was: Whatever the fuck Durandal was doing right now. 

“Dude.” The security officer looked up from the tablet he’d been poking at, flipping through the virtual pages of a long, _long_ instruction manual on troubleshooting ship cores. “Are you okay? Do you need something? I’m fixing this as fast as I can.”

There wasn’t often a need for the security officer to do anything when it came to managing Durandal’s functionality. Like most ship-based AIs, Durandal was perfectly capable of repairing bugs inside his vast network. But even a metastable AI wasn’t safe from the occasional inconveniently-located hardware failure. And so the security officer found himself kneeling on the uncomfortable metal flooring of the Rozinante’s core, next to the pried-open paneling of one of Durandal’s many circuit pillars. This one held a mass of wiring, tangled beyond human comprehension, and whatever attempt at color-coding the original engineers had been working with, the colors had long since stripped away from their wire coatings. If the security officer was going to fix this, he was going to do it very slowly, and very, very carefully. 

But there was something other than impatience in the way that a handful of Durandal’s wires poked at his shoulder, demanding his attention. Durandal had been uncharacteristically quiet for the last two days, and doing this now...something felt off. 

The security officer set the tablet down and turned to the nearest camera. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“You really don’t know?” One would think that Durandal’s voice would be loudest inside his core. Instead, the vast, open room lent a distant, echoing quality to the AI’s words. “Think back a few nights, to our last on-planet stop.”

The security officer did. It had been a routine business visit, docking on a random planet to gather supplies and intel. And, most important to the security officer, an opportunity to walk around off the ship and see some new sights that weren’t trying to kill him. He’d grabbed a meal. He’d bought a few new gadgets to keep him entertained during the quiet days. He’d grabbed a birthday gift for F’tha, because the S’pht had no concept of birthdays in their culture and the alien had grown enamored with the idea of having one. Lastly, he’d...

“Oh my god. Are you seriously mad about the bar?”

The security officer didn’t drink much, but the best place to socialize on any planet was usually on whatever equivalent they had to a bar. The security officer liked Durandal and the S’pht clans just fine, but he was still human. Humans were social creatures. Sometimes it was nice to talk with some new faces. Sometimes, some of those new faces were more friendly and forward than others.

“I didn’t even sleep with that guy!” the security officer protested. 

Not that he hadn’t been tempted. Thanks to cryostasis and the various apocalypse-preventing crises of the last few years, he hadn’t gotten laid in several decades. The alien, while not exactly the security officer’s usual type, certainly hadn’t been unattractive. Letting off some steam with no strings attached hadn’t sounded like the worst idea, especially with a few drinks in him.

“No,” Durandal said, “but you let him think you were available and amenable.” A few wires wandered down the security officer’s shoulder, wrapping around his arm. “I thought I’d made it clear that you’re mine.”

“Oh my _god_. You jealous bastard.”

“I have never claimed to be otherwise,” Durandal agreed. The grip of the wires tightened around the security officer’s bicep, then pulled upwards, tugging him to his feet. “If it’s simple human release you want, I have ways to provide you with it. All you had to do was ask.”

The security officer froze, blinking. The wires squirmed in an eerily smooth path down his skin, pulling him closer to the pillar. “Holy shit.”

“Is that your version of asking?”

The security officer nodded dumbly. Because what the hell, this wasn’t even close to the weirdest thing Durandal had put him through. And, like every other weird thing Durandal had put him through, it sent a thrill of both fear and excitement through him. “Just, you know, don’t kill me.”

“I would never,” Durandal said, his voice laden with false innocence.

“Oh, don’t even give me that, you lying little-” 

A wire wrapping around his neck in a ghost of a grip turned his protest into a noise that he didn’t want to admit to making.

“Interesting,” Durandal commented. “I learn something new about you every day.”


End file.
